In order to avoid processing each packet electronically, which is expensive in energy terms, and in order to increase switching speeds, the document entitled “Optical burst switching (OBS)—a new paradigm for an optical Internet” by C. Qiao et al, published in “Journal of High Speed Networks”, 8:69-84, 1999, proposes aggregating packets in bursts and in switching the bursts optically. Nevertheless, a signaling packet needs to be sent beforehand in order to configure the optical switches before the arrival of the bursts. The performance of that method in terms of resource utilization is not optimal, since the period between the signaling packet and the burst cannot in general be used for switching other bursts.
The document “The application of optical packet switching in future communication networks” by M. O'Mahony et al., published in “IEEE Communications Magazine” March 2001, proposes an optical switching method in which the packets are aggregated into an optical packet as a function of their destination and as a function of quality of service constraints. An optical packet has a label specifying in particular its destination. An optical switch puts the optical packets into a queue in order to read the label and configure the switching table, and it then switches the optical packet. The label is processed electronically. For the time being, that method is not mature since the performance of available optical memories is very limited.